The Secret Cardinal

by Tom Grace

  The couple that provided the yurts owned few possessions, but what they had were well cared for. Through halting English, they let Kilkenny know that he and his companions were honored guests and, as if to emphasize the point, showed him their most prized possession. Hidden behind a false panel on the altar was a worn photograph clipped from a Taiwanese magazine—the Dalai Lama and Pope Leo XIV together in prayer. Kilkenny was humbled by the tremendous risk the couple took each day in possessing that image, a risk they accepted only because of a deeply rooted faith. Only here, in the wilderness along China’s northern border, could the descendants of Genghis Khan find spiritual contentment in a belief system that wedded traditional Tibetan Buddhism with Roman Catholicism.

  Tao stepped into the yurt and removed her hat and coat. Everything she wore was chosen to emphasize that she was Chinese and not American. Even the way she carried herself had changed. Kilkenny considered how easily she had slipped into this native persona. The most significant change in Tao’s appearance, though, was the simplest to execute. Before leaving the United States, Tao cut the waterfall of silky hair that reached her waist, trading her tresses for a functional, military bob.

  “Time to do your makeup,” Tao said as she placed a low stool and a tackle box on the floor near the fire. She pointed to where she wanted Kilkenny to sit.

  “I never thought I’d hear anyone say that to me,” Kilkenny replied.

  Tao started by cleaning and drying Kilkenny’s face, neck, and hands—areas of skin that would be visible when he was dressed. She laid out various prosthetics and began applying adhesive to Kilkenny’s skin.

  “Careful,” Kilkenny said. Some of the fading bruises on his face were still tender.

  He remained still as Tao affixed bits of latex to simulate edemas and lacerations. In the first pass, she fattened Kilkenny’s lower lip, blackened an eye and a cheek, and raised welts on his hands and forearms. Tao next softened the edges around the prosthetics with flesh-toned liquid latex, erasing seams that would destroy the illusion.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Tao asked.

  “Somebody has to let Yin know what’s happening. I’d hate for him to have a heart attack when Bravo shows up for his execution.”

  “But why you? Why not one of the others?”

  “You mean someone of Chinese descent?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Better they stay outside. If something goes wrong, they have a chance of blending in and getting away. It was either going to be Max or me, and I’d rather have him running Alpha and covering my back.” Kilkenny laughed.

  “What?”

  “On the flight over, Max asked me the same thing.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I’m the man on a rope, the guy they lower down into a deep hole to rescue someone trapped in the darkness. My job is to find the lost soul and hold fast to the rope. Yours is to pull us out.”

  Tao stared into Kilkenny’s eyes for a moment and once more saw the strength of his conviction. They had saved each other’s lives more than once, and an absolute trust cemented their friendship.

  “That new haircut is still taking some getting used to,” Kilkenny said, breaking the silence as Tao resumed work on his forehead.

  “For me too. I’ve had long hair since I was a little girl. At least it will all grow back and some deserving kids will benefit from my little sacrifice.”

  After signing on for this mission, Tao donated her hair—in two twelve-inch-long chunks—to Locks of Love to make wigs for pediatric cancer patients. Kilkenny first saw her new bob when he landed in China. The change in Tao’s appearance was so severe that at first he didn’t recognize her—which of course was the idea.

  She applied a mix of paints and powders to tint Kilkenny’s artificially swollen areas in shades of milky yellow, black, and blue. Around the open wounds, Tao dabbed on a dark viscous fluid that, as it dried, formed a crusty, fractured surface like coagulated blood. She also placed droplets of simulated scab on Kilkenny’s face and neck, mimicking blood splatter. On two of his fingers, Tao blackened the nails. Last, she smeared and dribbled simulated blood onto Kilkenny’s uniform, transforming him into a thoroughly abused prisoner.

  “Now, just sit there for a moment and let everything really set up,” Tao said. “I have to get changed.”

  She stepped behind a modesty curtain, removed her civilian clothing, and donned the dark gray uniform of an officer of the Ministry of Justice. Like U.S. marshals, cadres assigned to the Ministry of Justice were an armed force separate from the police and the People’s Liberation Army. This force provided security for the courts, oversaw the handling and transport of prisoners, and, as the insignia on Tao’s uniform indicated, executed prisoners.

  “How do I look?” Tao stepped into view.

  “Like a death-row inmate’s worst nightmare,” Kilkenny replied.

  “I thought men liked a woman in uniform.”

  “It depends on the woman and the uniform,” Kilkenny said, recalling the first time he saw Kelsey in a NASA flight suit.

  Tao caught the melancholy tone in his voice and dropped this line of banter. “Let me take a look at you.”

  Tao slowly walked around Kilkenny, studying her handiwork at various angles.

  “I may not win an Oscar for best makeup,” Tao said, “but it should do the trick.”

  19

  It was almost midnight as Bob Shen downshifted, slowing the truck as he drove up to the main gate of Chifeng Prison. The approach was a paved two-lane track covered with a thin layer of wind-driven dirt. The truck’s thickly grooved tires kicked up a dusty haze behind the vehicle. A guard stepped out of the gatehouse and signaled Shen to halt.

  Shen brought the truck to a stop at a white line painted across the roadway—the entire vehicle now bathed in harsh, cool light. The guard took notice of the Beijing markings stenciled on the truck’s body as he strutted toward the driver’s door. Two more guards appeared near the gate, their weapons trained on Shen and Tao, seated in the cab beside him.

  “Papers,” the guard demanded.

  With cool detachment, Tao handed a dossier to Shen, who passed it to the guard. The man quickly scanned the forged documents.

  “Prisoner transfer, eh,” the guard said. “We received no notification of any transfer scheduled for tonight.”

  “If you had actually read those documents,” Tao replied, her voice a blend of superiority and boredom, “you would have noticed that this transfer is unscheduled for reasons of state security.”

  Chastised, the guard made a more thorough review of the paperwork and found that the transfer authorization bore proper signatures from the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of State Security. The packet included a photograph of the prisoner but listed no name, meaning Beijing wanted no record kept of this person’s movements within the prison system. The prisoner was obviously not a common criminal.

  The guard motioned for the outer gate to be opened and returned to the gatehouse. The barrier—a five-meter-high wall of electrified chain link fastened to structural steel tubing that curved inward near its full height and was topped with a tightly coiled helix of razor wire—rolled to the left along a narrow-gauge rail. When the way was clear, Shen pulled the truck forward to the next barrier. The outer gate closed behind the truck, and only after it was secure was the inner gate opened.

  Though no longer aiming at Tao and Shen, the two guards kept their weapons trained on the truck as it passed through the gate. Tao paid no heed to the guards’ aggressive stance—it was standard procedure. A lax display at the main gate would have surprised her more.

  A jeep arrived at the gatehouse just as the truck cleared the inner gate. The senior guard approached as the jeep came to a stop and handed Tao’s dossier to the lieutenant at the wheel. Unlike the guard, the lieutenant took his time reviewing the documents.

  The young officer was a tall man, Tao realized as he stepped out of the jeep, and carried himself ramrod s
traight. He walked directly to Tao’s window, and they exchanged salutes.

  “Good evening, Captain,” the lieutenant said. “The paperwork authorizing this transfer appears to be in order, though I am a bit surprised that we received no prior notification.”

  “This is a highly unusual situation, Lieutenant Kwan,” Tao said, reading the name off the rectangular black badge pinned to the officer’s jacket. “My superiors in Beijing wish their actions to leave as light a trail as possible. It is to be as if this prisoner was never here.”

  “I understand,” Kwan said.

  “The prisoner is to be held in solitary confinement. He is to have no contact with any other prisoners, and contact with your guards is to be kept to an absolute minimum. Under no circumstances is anyone to speak with this prisoner without authorization from the Ministry of State Security. Are these orders clear?”

  “Perfectly. We have other prisoners with similar restrictions. The guards in the solitary wing will handle this prisoner accordingly. A question, if I may?”

  Tao nodded her assent.

  “I saw no sentencing information in the dossier.”

  “All information regarding this prisoner is classified,” Tao was curt. “What is your question?”

  “How long is this prisoner to be kept here?”

  “For the rest of his life, which I expect will not be long.”

  Kwan nodded. “I will arrange for a detachment to take custody of the prisoner for processing and transfer to the solitary-confinement wing.”

  “There is no need to process this prisoner,” Tao said forcefully, her anger thinly veiled. “He does not exist.”

  “Yes, but protocol requires the prisoner be stripped, visually inspected by our medical staff, and deloused before being placed in a cell.”

  “Have I not made myself clear, Kwan?” Tao asked, her annoyance rising. “Contact with this prisoner is to be minimal. Preferably nonexistent. Your hygienic protocol is not required. Your detachment is not required. My soldiers will guard the prisoner as he is moved into a cell. All that is required is one person to escort us—you.”

  Tao’s eyes bore into the man, her position firmly delivered. He accepted her authority with a brief shrug.

  “If your driver will follow me, I will take you to the entry with the shortest route into the solitary wing.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant,” Tao replied, her tone a hint softer.

  As he walked back to the jeep, Kwan barked a string of orders into a walkie-talkie to clear the route through the cellblock. From the reconnaissance photos, Tao knew which building held Yin, but those images did little to soften the brutal impact of the structure. Human beings languished inside those windowless walls, men interred in a mausoleum for the living, some for the crime of daring to believe in a power greater than the state.

  They parked at the motor pool beside the prison’s small fleet of vehicles. The area was well lit but deserted at this hour. The lieutenant met Tao and Shen at the rear of the transport.

  “Bring the prisoner out!” Tao ordered.

  The rear door swung open and Chuck Jing and Paul Sung stepped out. Behind them, Kilkenny shuffled toward the opening, followed by David Tsui. Kilkenny’s wrists and ankles were manacled and tethered to chains riveted to a thick leather belt cinched around his waist. He was dressed in a pair of loose-fitting prison pajamas, his head hung low, for all appearances a broken man. Tao noticed that the lieutenant didn’t wince when he caught sight of Kilkenny’s battered face, either a sign of formidable control or evidence that the man was inured to brutality.

  Jing and Sung lowered Kilkenny to the ground. Kwan compared the face of the prisoner with the photograph included in the file and verified the match.

  “I see you survived the long journey here with only a few bumps and bruises,” Tao said. “The road is unfortunately very rough in some places.”

  Jing, Sung, and Tsui laughed for Kwan’s benefit. Kilkenny shrugged, not understanding a word of Chinese.

  “Hood,” Tao ordered.

  Tsui draped a baggy black hood over Kilkenny’s head and neck. The four soldiers accompanying Tao took up positions around the prisoner, two at Kilkenny’s arms to steer him along the way.

  “Lead the way, Lieutenant,” Tao commanded.

  Each of the heavy steel doors Kwan led them through was secured by a magnetic lock and monitored by a closed-circuit camera.

  I hope Grin is watching this, Tao thought, resisting the urge to glance up at the cameras.

  The route Kwan chose avoided areas where the prison’s general population was housed for their scant hours of exhausted sleep between work shifts, so they saw few guards and no prisoners during the transit. Tao immediately noticed the difference when Kwan led them through a door into the solitary-confinement wing—the floors looked almost new. Elsewhere in the prison, evidence of the daily wear of thousands of footsteps showed unmistakably on the concrete, but the floors in this wing bore no sign of heavily trafficked use. Only the occasional scuffmark from the black sole of a guard’s shoe or the wheels of the meal cart marred the glossy gray finish.

  A lone guard stood at attention by a flush steel door near the end of the hall. Like the other guards Tao saw, the man wore an electronic earpiece, the thin wire dropping from behind his ear and down his collar. He saluted as Tao and the lieutenant approached.

  “Open it,” Kwan commanded.

  The guard thumbed the SEND switch on the radio clipped to his belt. “Open three-four-two.”

  The electronic locks on the door buzzed, and the gears slowly pulled the heavy slab of metal to the side. Tao found her eyes drawn to the dark void, horrified at the perverse justice it represented. The thought of her friend spending even one minute in that cell angered and sickened her, but that Kilkenny would do so voluntarily to free an innocent man quelled those emotions. Somewhere close by, Yin Daoming lost decades of this life locked inside an identical two-meter cube.

  “Put him in,” Tao said.

  Jing and Sung guided Kilkenny through the doorway into the cell. Inside, they removed his restraints and pushed him into the shadows. There, outside the shaft of light from the corridor, they removed the hood and left Kilkenny in the darkness.

  Kilkenny’s heart was racing as the cell door closed. The steel dead bolts slid home with a dull metallic thud. He briefly heard voices outside his door, though he doubted he would have understood even if they were speaking English. Soon the voices were gone.

  It wasn’t the darkness that bothered Kilkenny. He had experienced perfect blackness in the depths of the oceans and once in an elaborate science experiment constructed in a cavern far beneath Lake Erie. His apprehension wasn’t claustrophobia either. He had faced that fear many times, most recently while searching the ocean floor off South America inside the metal shell of a Hardsuit with a mile of water weighing him down with a crushing force more than a hundred times that of Earth’s atmosphere at sea level.

  The primordial surge of adrenaline Kilkenny felt was rooted solely in his loss of control. He had allowed himself to be placed inside a box of concrete and steel. That box was surrounded by armed guards and razor wire and situated inside a nation whose government would kill him if it knew of his presence and his purpose.

  From his childhood on, Kilkenny’s parents instilled in him the virtue of self-reliance—an attribute that formed the bedrock of his personality. It was the lens through which he viewed himself and those around him. His body reacted against the perceived dangers of his situation, confused by an action it instinctively considered suicidal. But his mind knew better.

  Kilkenny slipped off the thin-soled slippers and knelt down with his feet spread about eighteen inches apart and the tops flat against the floor. His arms hung at his sides, the rest of his body tall and upright. He inhaled deeply, and then slowly sat back, his palms resting on his thighs until his buttocks reached the floor. His knees crackled loudly with the increased tension in the joints.

  Seated, Kilk
enny raised his torso vertical and with each breath widened his chest. He could feel the energy flowing from the center of his body. He interlocked his fingers, turned his palms out, and raised his outstretched arms high above his head.

  Virasana. The word suddenly flashed into Kilkenny’s conscious mind—the name the young woman who taught yoga at the community center had called this pose. The hero posture.

  He moved slowly through a series of asanas, loosening his joints and steadying his breathing and the flow of blood throughout his body. The anxiety ebbed as he stretched, some of the ancient postures proving to be a challenge within the restrictive confines of the cell. A sheen of sweat dampened his prison uniform.

  Through the exercises, Kilkenny achieved a state of meditative calm. His conscious mind possessed something that his body could not comprehend—faith. Kilkenny’s situation, though dire, was not hopeless. That hope was rooted in the faith he had in his friends and the team they had assembled for this mission.

  20

  VATICAN CITY October 29

  On the morning of the fifteenth day following the death of Pope Leo XIV, the cardinals gathered inside Saint Peter’s Basilica to take part in the votive mass Pro Eligendo Papa—For the Election of the Pope. They were as one, a sea of scarlet and white in the transepts and nave surrounding the baldacchino. The archpriest of the patriarchal Vatican basilica led his fellow cardinals and the faithful in attendance through the somber Eucharistic celebration. The theme of the mass could be distilled to a single hope—that God would help the cardinals select the right man to lead the Church. As voices of the pontifical choir rose in song, filling the basilica with the closing hymn, each cardinal felt the enormity of the task at hand.

  After the mass, the cardinal electors gathered in the pontifical palace, in the four-room suite known as the Stanze di Raphaello—the Raphael Rooms. There, they enjoyed a light lunch while surrounded by frescos painted by the Renaissance master and his finest students. Though widely differing in subject matter, frescos ranging from the School of Athens and Parnassus to Battle of Ostia and Constantine’s Donation , the suite was unified in themes celebrating the power of faith and the Church. In the Room of the Fire of the Borgo, the frescos make specific reference to Leo III and Leo IV, predecessors of Leo X, under whose pontificate the room was decorated. As Donoher studied the figure of Pope Leo III extinguishing the Borgo fire of 847 by making the sign of the cross, the cardinal wondered how Raphael would have depicted the accomplishments of the most recent Leo.